As the improvement of the human life, the use of devices such as information devices, communication devices, entertainment devices, home electronic appliances, automating devices, security monitoring devices and the likes in home is increased. Meanwhile, as the personal computers (PCs) and Internet are widely used in home, and with the development of telecommunication technology and smart devices, home network is paid more and more attention. The need for a simple, flexible, and reliable home network enters into human life. Therefore, a lot of home network concepts such as Smart Home, Electronic Home (e-Home), Digital Family, Network Home, Intelligent Home are proposed. More specifically, home network has four meanings: 1) the devices such as information devices, communication devices, entertainment devices, home electronic appliances, automating devices, security monitoring devices and the likes in home are interconnected, share resources, and combine a home smart network system; 2) the devices in home connect to local community network and internet through gateway so that information can be exchanged with the environment out of home; 3) the devices in home and the network to which the devices connect can satisfy the basic requirements of human for security, convenience, comfort, health and environment protection so as to provide the experience to make human enjoyment; and 4) the home network can be easily used, safety and reliable, easily maintained, reasonable price, and satisfy the home life.
In view of above-mentioned problems, another patent application filed by the applicant of this application proposed a digital home network system. As shown in FIG. 1, the system disclosed in the another patent application comprises a gateway 11, one or more backbone network devices 12 and a plurality of control subnetwork devices 13. The gateway 11 may comprises two sections, a door-gateway 110 and a control gateway 111. The door-gateway 110 connects the control gateway 111 through a wideband interface. According to the configuration of the system, the digital home network comprises two subnetworks, i.e., backbone network and control subnetwork. The network composed of the home gateway 110 and the home devices connected to the home gateway 110 is called as backbone network. The backbone network is used for carrying out the interconnection of the home devices such as information devices, communication devices, entertainment devices and the likes. The network composed of the control gateway 111 and the home devices connected to the control gateway 111 is called as control subnetwork. The control subnetwork is used for carrying out the interconnection of the home devices such as home electronic appliances, automating devices, security monitoring devices and the likes. The digital home network has a function to have the home devices interconnected and to share resource. In the home network system, the home gateway, the control gateway and the server are called as resource management device for managing the network resource.
According to network configuration as described above, the interconnection and the sharing of resource among the network devices are implemented with following manners.
When a device A applies for accessing the home network, first, the device A looks for a resource management device, then sends a registering request to the resource management device. After receiving an authorization from the resource management device, the device A establishes a connection with the resource management device based on the security authorization from the resource management device. The device A registers into the resource management device in the network if the connection is successful. That is, the device A sends its device information to the resource management device and then registers the service which can be provided by the device A itself into the resource management device. The resource management device stores all of device registering information and service registering information so that the information of the devices accessed to the network can be searched easily.
When two devices which have accessed to the home network communicate with each other, the device A which originates the communication first sends a device searching request to the resource management device. The resource management device searches the device registering information into a storing unit in the resource management device to determine whether or not there is an appropriate device to communicate with the device A. If there is an appropriate device B, the information of the device B is sent to the device A. Then, the device A sends a request to device B in response to the reception of the information of device B from the resource management device. The device A calls the service from device B. The device A automatically disconnects with device B after the operation is complete.
The device will perform a logout operation to cancel its relative information, which includes device information and service information, from the resource management device when the device disconnect with the network.
In above operation, the resource management device may exist or not in the network. The devices can perform communication through equity connection formed by self-negotiating among the devices after the mutual searching among the devices is performed. If there is a resource management device in the network, the resource management device would announce the information of itself periodically to other devices. The devices other than the resource management device would also announce their information in various cases.
It can be seen form the operation as described above, various applications based on the home network are implemented by calling services. That is, the service call is a very important step to achieve the interconnection and the sharing of resources in home network.